PowerPoint painfully slow on Intel-based macs

[Alfie]

I am a recent convert back to Mac after a 7 year hiatus. I am a heavy
PowerPoint user and have both the Intel-based iMac and MacBook Pro. I
understand Office for Mac is not a Universal app and may not be for
some time. I have found Word and Excel to work fine despite requiring
Rosetta to run the code. PowerPoint, on the other hand is unbearable.
It runs entirely too slow taking a vast amount of time to re-render in
the slide sorter view after moving slides or cutting and pasting new
ones in.

As an advanced user of PowerPoint, I have found it disturbing that the
Mac version's "Normal" view does not allow you to view slides in the
left-hand pane like the Windows version does all you get is an outline
view. Am I missing something or is it simply unavailable? I find it
helpful to be editing one slide while viewing in the left-hand pane the
slides preceeding and following the one I am editing.

Is there any fix to the speed issue with an update or the like? It is
so painful I am considering buying Keynote since it is a Universal app
but I worry about the cross compatibility with PPT since I exchange
presentations with Windows users often as well as being required to
provide a PPT version of my talks in many places that do not allow me
to use my own computer for the presentation.

As a side note, when I copy a section of a pdf file using Preview and
try to paste it directly into my PPT, it pastes as a black image and
you cannot see the writing from the original pdf import.

Anyone with similar frustrations? Any help would be greatly
appreciated.

Thanks,
Alfie

 

[googmeister]

I am a recent convert back to Mac after a 7 year hiatus. I am a heavy
PowerPoint user and have both the Intel-based iMac and MacBook Pro. I
understand Office for Mac is not a Universal app and may not be for
some time. I have found Word and Excel to work fine despite requiring
Rosetta to run the code. PowerPoint, on the other hand is unbearable.
It runs entirely too slow taking a vast amount of time to re-render in
the slide sorter view after moving slides or cutting and pasting new
ones in.

Yes, this has frustrated many users, but I don't think it has
anything to do with Rosetta or Intel. The PowerPC version is also
ridiculously slow to use in slide sorter mode.

As an advanced user of PowerPoint, I have found it disturbing that the
Mac version's "Normal" view does not allow you to view slides in the
left-hand pane like the Windows version does all you get is an outline
view. Am I missing something or is it simply unavailable? I find it
helpful to be editing one slide while viewing in the left-hand pane the
slides preceeding and following the one I am editing.

Yes, unavailable as far as I can tell. Switch to slide sorter mode.

As a side note, when I copy a section of a pdf file using Preview and
try to paste it directly into my PPT, it pastes as a black image and
you cannot see the writing from the original pdf import.

Powerpoint support for pdf is embarrassingly poor. Here's
what I do: zoom in on the pdf in Preview, type Apple-Shift-4 to
activate the screen shot tool, select the desired region (it
saves to a .png graphics file on the Desktop), insert the image
into powerpoint, resize it.

 

[Alfie]

Thanks Googmeister

 

[ingenious]

"As a side note, when I copy a section of a pdf file using Preview and
try to paste it directly into my PPT, it pastes as a black image and
you cannot see the writing from the original pdf import."

My friend has this problem with Word 2004 on his Mac mini (G4). We
think that Preview just hasn't had time to completely copy his image
(his are probably all .jpg's). Have you tried waiting just a little
bit longer before pasting to see if that helps? Or if it is black when
you paste, trying to paste it again?